


The Deciding Factor

by orphan_account



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, First Kiss, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2019-01-03 22:23:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12156021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Starting a new relationship with anyone means navigating tricky territory – but Stan and Ford both have decades of experience with difficult terrain. Some Stancest confessions of love.





	The Deciding Factor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elligy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elligy/gifts).



Tonight’s dream:

Their father, taller than Paul Bunyan and twice as imposing, looming in the kitchen. He was a slow man, direct in all things, but quick as a bullwhip when angered. In the dream, he is furious. Stan has broken a bowl. His father’s hand snaps through the air. That is the real memory, and where the real memory ends and the dream begins, turning grandiose and strange the way only dreams can – his father is Ford, now, his six-fingered hand wrenched in Stan’s hair, his face ruddy with anger, his teeth bared.

“Didn’t you read my warnings?” he snarls, yanking Stan to his feet.

Stan says, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” the way he would when he was still very small and his father was very angry, his voice high-pitched and pathetic. He’s crying in huge, deep sobs. Ford jerks him across the floor and through the kitchen, their shoes squeaking on the linoleum like it used to when they were children. By the time they reach the door, they are children, or teenagers, anyway, Ford in one of his faded button-ups, his tie undone and loose around his neck.

He shoves the door open to a turbulent and wild sea, white caps cresting over the railings to drown the deck. Ford throws him down. The saltwater is vivid in Stan’s mouth, and he tries to spit it out, tries to say something to Ford, but it’s too hard to move, now, the sea tossing their little boat so roughly that it’s going to capsize.

“Look at it, Stanley!” Ford screams, his voice cracking over the thunder of the waves like lightning. “Look at what you’ve done!”

Stan knows what comes next even before the light changes. Shadows furl under the waves, backlit by a deep red glow; lightning cracks across the sky, shaped all wrong, shaped like –

“Grunkle Stan!”  _Mabel –_  where is she? He can hear her screaming but can’t see her. The waves twine around his limbs and hold him fast. “Grunkle Stan, please!  _Help!_ ”

Stan jerks awake to a warm orange glow and music. His heart pounds in his chest, and his fear makes the room seem compressed, all the indistinct shapes he’s come to learn from a hundred mornings and nights turned threatening.

Then, Ford speaks. “Now, Stanley, you don’t need to get up earlier just to impress me.”

Just like that, Stan is home. He scowls and sits up, fumbling for his glasses. He jams them on so he can properly squint at Ford. “Okay, smartass, did you even try to sleep?”

“Not yet,” Ford says. “It’s only a little after one.”

Stan shakes the water off his dentures and slots them into his mouth, popping his jaw as he does. His heart’s still rabbiting in his chest, but it’s easier, now, and the nightmare is fading, leaving only faint images: Ford yanking him to his feet, Mabel’s scream in the distance, the leviathan waves. “No wonder you nap all day.”

“I do not.” Ford hesitates. “Not more than you, at any rate.”

“Yeah, exactly. It’s a wonder this hunk of junk hasn’t sunk yet.”

“Incredible,” Ford says. “Awake for ten seconds and already rhyming.”

“And you must be tired, ‘cause you’re not saying something unpunny back at me. Go to bed, Sixer.”

Ford turns in his chair, finally; Stan doesn’t like the look on his face, all thoughtful and tired. “That’s the third one this week,” he says. Stan scrubs a hand over his face as a new type of dread settles into him. “If you’re still dreaming about Bill – ”

“Get off it,” Stan says. “Don’t you? After what he did to the kids – coulda done – ”

Ford stands. He takes a knee on Stan’s bed, crowding in his space – and for one wild, inexplicable second, Stan thinks he’s going to lean forward and kiss him. The thought is like the silence after a bell, a stillness that echoes inside of Stan. Instead, Ford pivots so he’s sitting next to Stan and leans against the wall. The bed is small enough that they have to sit shoulder-to-shoulder, hip-to-hip, thigh-to-thigh. Stan scoots against the wall, but even so that just lessens the pressure, makes it comfortable.

“May I have a spiel?”

“Oh, boy,” Stan says, more focused on the way Ford’s body heat is filling the space of his bunk than on the nightmare. “Here we go. Fine, but this is the only one you get today.”

Ford actually thinks that over, weighing the pros and cons of getting it out now. He’ll have forgotten this agreement by noon, anyway, and go on some lecture about the fish Stan’s caught and how it’s similar and different from some alien fish, or maybe go on his six hundredth tangent about Kraken and sea monsters. The fact that he’s giving Stan’s jab this much weight in the moment, though, makes something fragile suffuse through Stan.

Stan has spent so long as the satellite orbiting around Ford’s life – the secondary kid, the idiot twin with no future, the loser bum who’d have more to gain from Ford than Ford would ever have from him – that it puts him off-balance to have Ford’s attention on him. No, not even his attention – to have Ford look after him, to have Ford, who has been a dark and unforgiving shadow trailing Stan for forty years, care about him, genuinely. He thought, after Weirdmageddon, that Ford’s opinion on him would go back to what it was when they were kids, or close enough.

It hasn’t.

“Alright,” Ford says. “Ever since the Galapagos incident, I have been doing some…secondary research. Research about trauma.”

Stan snorts. “That what you’re calling it now? An  _incident?_ ”

Ford ignores him. “And, I must say, though psychology is a pseudo-science at best, there is some – some merit to it. Or, rather, it has been illuminating for me to be reminded of something that all humans know inherently. Well.” He takes off his glasses and begins to polish them neatly. “Most humans. Our family notwithstanding.” He pauses, turning his glasses this way and that, inspecting them for any last specks of dust. Once satisfied, he sighs, and puts them on, and turns to look Stan in the face, a frank expression that Stan struggles to not look away from. “Stanley, I’ve been alone for a long, long time. For most of that time, I told myself that I was an independent and self-sufficient man. That I didn’t need anyone.”

He licks his lips with a quick flash of his tongue. Here, he hesitates, the lines of his brow deepening as he searches Stan’s face. He pivots, then, his mood turning brisk and business-like. “My point is,” he says, “I understand that neither of us will ever tell everything to one another. That is, I believe, healthier in the long-run. I’d rather not become the pair we were when we were children. But, Stanley – what I need you to know – what I need you to understand – is that you  _can_ talk to me. Especially about Bill Cipher. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Uh,” Stan says. It’s like Ford led him to a conversational cliff and then just decided to leave him dangling there. The boat rocks. The song changes, kicks in fast-pitched and jazzy, matching his pounding heart. “Are you drunk?”

Ford laughs, hard, a deep and pleasant sound that vibrates through Stan. He pats Stan’s knee, then jerks his hand back, which makes what would’ve been an ordinary touch uncomfortable. Stan’s whole body is tight, expectant. “No,” Ford says, and pats his own knee, as if patting things is just what he does at one in the morning. “Not yet. Shall we?”

Stan doesn’t have to be asked twice.

*

Stan’s taken up radio duty, because Ford has a bad tendency to follow meaningless noise down rabbit holes and has broken the radio twice trying to upgrade it. It’s one of the things that confused Stan, when they first wound up out here together – Ford’s brilliant, can whip whole devices out of thin air, once offered to perform cataract surgery on Stan with several reassurances that it was  _absolutely, positively safe, even safer than the primitive surgeons you’d be dealing with on Earth_  – but he assumes everything’s more complex than it really is. Radios, phones, and cars all frustrate him, make him bristle and rant about how  _practically every other dimension is leagues ahead, really, this is ridiculous –_

Why he’s fine with the boat, Stan’s not sure. Not to say Ford hasn’t put some upgrades on it, tinkering endlessly with the engine in their first month until the thing purred, adding security measures that he’s assured Stan won’t be necessary unless he’s been followed, upgrading the stove and lights and every other thing he can think to upgrade.

Anyway, Stan’s on radio duty and keeping an eye on their radar while Ford tinkers with some seaweed below deck when the radar picks up a signal. It’s been picking up shipwrecks for the last two miles, and at first that’s what Stan thinks this is, another freighter with cargo and skeletons and ghosts not worth chasing. The dot flashes. On the radio, a crewman breaks professionalism by calling the man on the other end a shithead, amicably.

The next time the dot flashes, it’s further northeast.

“Hey, Sixer!” He waits for the vague, muffled shout in reply, then: “We got something!”

*

Again, on a sleepy overcast night:

The boxing ring he knew in London, before the fight that landed him in prison – a quiet room, filled with spectators who were always rowdy before and after a fight but are currently tight-lipped, not wanting to distract their fighters or attract the police. Stan, loping into the ring between the ropes. Someone in the crowd whistles, trying to rattle him, but doesn’t pursue it – and the silence does rattle Stan, down to his bones, a discomfort he never could entirely shake in London, even on lazy evenings with a cigar and a beer at the pub down his street.

His opponent climbs in. Ford, of course. Except Ford is old, wearing just his jacket and loose sweatpants, the strings swaying against his thighs as he rights himself. Hair curls across his chest, down from his navel. There is a tattoo half-hidden by the jacket, bright and cheery. Stan would bet the fight that it’s ridiculous.

Ford shrugs off his jacket and rests it over the ropes. His belly is soft, but his arms are corded, lean, powerful. Tattoos crawl over him, not in any discernible pattern. “Have at thee,” he says, an old, stupid thing they used to spit at each other when they were just kids in the ring.

Stan goes to him. The fight is a blur, indistinct, more noise than anything. Ford grunts from effort and pain. Stan ends up grappling him, then works his elbow around Ford’s throat – Ford’s body is a brand, burning its curves into Stan, but Stan doesn’t let go, just puts him methodically onto the floor.

 _Tap out,_ he thinks, maybe says into Ford’s gray hairline. He can feel Ford’s muscles working against Stan, struggling to lift his weight.  _Tap out._ Stan’s pulse pounds between his legs.

Then, they are on the boat, curled up against one another. There seems to be twenty layers between them, coats and blankets, but Ford’s breath curls in the space between them and warms Stan’s nose. Soft arctic light filters through the porthole. “Stanley,” he says. “Stanley.” There is pressure between Stan’s legs. “I don’t want to fight.”

Stan wakes.

The room is dark except for a faint orange glow from a flashlight. For a moment, Stan thinks Ford is panting loud enough that Stan can hear him, and he wonders,  _is he jerking off up there?_  – but then he realizes that it’s just the sea, rhythmic, desperate in the way only the world can be. Maybe it’s Stan, too, just a little, his breath coming in rough. His body buzzes with desire.

Not for Ford, he tells himself. It’s just – Ford’s pretty much the only human being he’s seen in the last six months. It’s not about Ford.

“You awake?” Ford says.

“Uh.”

“Another nightmare?”

“No,” he says. “Do you watch me sleep?”

“Sometimes,” Ford says.

“Uh.”

“Not – no, that came out wrong. When you’re acting abnormally in your sleep, yes.”

Stan rubs at his eyes. Ford doesn’t ever seem to have trouble understanding him when he doesn’t have his teeth in, but Stan hates the way his words come out, slurred and undefined. After a second, he figures he won’t just drift back to sleep. He fits his dentures in, crooks his jaw this way and that, then sighs. “Here’s a tip, Brainiac: Don’t tell people you watch them sleep.”

“Well,” Ford says, “I would find it more suspicious if I lied to you about it. We sleep five feet apart, Stanley; it would be harder to not watch you sleep.”

“That is kinda sweet, though,” Stan continues. He wraps his hands in his sheets, twists slow, slow, grateful for any distraction from the slow burn in his belly.

“Why do you always say things like that sarcastically?” Ford says. “I’m perfectly capable of caring about you. In fact, I do quite often.”

“'Quite often,’” Stan replies, drily.

“Yes. Most of the time. Even…” He stops.

Stan goes very still, listening. Waiting.

“Even back then, I cared. In the portal.” Ford flicks off his flashlight; he snaps whatever book he was reading shut. “I always have.”

“Stanford – ”

“Even if you have often been an idiot,” Ford adds, in the brisk tone of voice Stan has gotten very used to these past few months. “Sunrise is in a few hours,” he says. “Try and get some rest.”

*

It’s late March, but still bitterly cold this far north as Stan takes to the dock with his spyglass. Ford has scoffed at him several times for using it when he’s provided  _infinitely more advanced binoculars, Stanley,_ but Stan’s seen Ford playing with it when he thinks Stan isn’t looking, so Stan doesn’t care what Ford says. Besides, the spyglass works better for Stan than the binoculars, doesn’t make him dizzy like they do.

He trains it on the horizon as Ford steers the Stan O'War after the blip. The water looks normal, a blue so vivid and bright it hurts to look at. Nothing to report, except how thrilled Stan is to be here, on the hunt for something wild and unknown with his brother, how the open sea makes his heart soar with glee.

The boat slows. The radar must be showing something the spyglass doesn’t, so Stan trains it closer to home, scanning the lazy waves around them for anything out of the ordinary.

Ford steps into the doorway, holding the frame, his jacket opening to the breeze. “It’s close!” Stan turns, and is stunned by the sight of his brother beaming, his face flushed with excitement, his hair unkempt in the wind, handsome and brave and  _his_ –

And then it all goes to hell.

*

This one is old:

They are in the basement. Arguing, of course. There is a blood-red thrumming in the air, bright as the pain in his shoulder:  _Warning, warning._ Neither of them heed it, Stan’s fists wrapped in Ford’s coat. Ford’s teeth are bared, turned fanged and monstrous. Spittle flies between them. Stan is becoming the monster, is dragging his brother to the portal, which rests on the floor, the pale blue glow worse than any pit to hell Stan could ever imagine.

Above the portal, Ford’s things lazily twirl. Stan’s pain is consuming him, becoming him. They struggle.

Stan pushes.

It’s only then that the panic sets in: He is losing his brother. He lunges for the portal, but Ford’s things have elongated, grown black tendrils that fill the air and pull him back.

“Stanley! Stanley, do something!”

“I’m trying!” And he is, struggling with all his might against the tendrils, but they are sapping him of his strength, leaving him helpless and weak. He can only watch as Ford sinks into the portal, inch by inch, his hand outstretched to Stan. His body swallowed; his pleading face is devoured by the blue light.

His brother’s forearm is all that’s left, his fingers outstretched – and Stan has managed to drag himself close enough that he can almost touch them, almost,  _almost_. At the last moment, their fingertips graze.

Bill’s laugh fills the room. The tendrils tighten on his arms, his neck.

He can still save him – he  _has_ to –

Ford is – Ford is –

“Calm down! It’s me, Stanley.” Ford is here, a pale, familiar smudge in the night, his face like a moon. For a moment, Stan is stuck between the dream and reality – he can’t move his arms; Bill Cipher is still holding him down – but then he registers the fluid weight of Ford’s grip for what it is. “Easy, easy. There you go. Just calm down.”

“I’m – fuck you,” he says. Ford lets go of his wrists. Stan regrets saying it, then, but there’s no taking it back, and hell, Ford shouldn’t have woken him up like this, shouldn’t be crowding over him in his bed. Who the hell, Stan thinks, holds down someone who’s having a nightmare, anyway? “I am calm.”

But he’s still shaking, hard, and when Ford doesn’t crawl off the bed, he’s glad for it. Ford’s knees are pressed tight against Stan’s side, a little painful. He leans down and cups Stan’s face, slowly, his hands warm and sticky with sweat. “Easy,” Ford says again.

“’M not a horse,” Stan says.

He takes Ford’s wrists in his hands; he means to pull them away so he can sit up and catch his breath, but he stops there, like some gear has broken in his elbows. Ford runs his thumbs along Stan’s cheeks, tentatively. Asking for permission.

“Was it Bill?” he asks.

Stan shakes his head.

“Was it me?”

Stan doesn’t answer. The dark line of Ford’s eyebrows and glasses cinches, becomes more focused. His thumbs stroke down Stan’s sideburns. This time, Stan knows Ford is going to kiss him, knows it the same way he’s known most of his first kisses. He’s glad he can’t see properly, glad he’s still disoriented and tired. If he were more awake, the warmth crawling through him would make him hit Ford, probably.

Ford rests his forehead against Stan’s. “Was it the portal?” he asks. Stan can taste his breath; the electric tickle of Ford’s mouth makes him suck in a sharp breath.

“What’re you doing?” he asks.

Ford lifts his head. He jerks, coming back to himself. His hands snap away from Stan’s face. But he can’t leave; Stan is still holding his wrists.

“I…” Ford twists his wrists against Stan’s grip. “I was calming you down.”

Stan swallows. Ford doesn’t want what he wants; that’s fine. But Stan has earned some selfishness, or that’s what everyone keeps telling him, anyway. “Never knew you to not commit,” he says. “That felt kinda nice.”

Ford hesitates. “Yes, touch has been scientifically proven to encourage the release of oxytocin and to lower cortisol levels. That’s – of course – that’s why I did it in the first place.”

Stan can still hear Ford screaming for help. Maybe he always will, his mistakes an intrinsic part of him, and of them.

Gently, he puts Ford’s hands back on his face. He lets go.

Ford’s fingers twitch. Stan shuts his eyes, so he doesn’t have to try to piece together what the change in Ford’s expression means – the ball is in Ford’s court, again, and Stan is too frazzled and too tired to care what he does. So he’s fucked up. That’s been his life story for as long as he can remember. Fine, fine, fine. He’ll let Ford be the deciding factor one last time.

*

There is a horrible splintering noise, louder than thunder. The ship jolts. Waves rush over the railing, sweeping at Stan’s legs; he almost expects to hear Mabel’s high-pitched scream. Instead, he hears Ford: “ _Stanley!_ Look out!”

He can’t keep his balance – the boat snaps forward. Out of the water rises a serpent to rival the Gobblewonker, its body whipping through the air, its fangs bared. Stan slams into the railing; all the breath is knocked out of him. Its tail crashes into the deck.

Stan sees lightning spark through the air the moment before he tumbles overboard, into the fray and noise.

The world turns blue.

*

Ford’s hands cup his face. They’re trembling, so slightly that Stan would never have known if they weren’t pressed against his cheeks.

*

“It’s okay,” Stan says, “Ford, it’s…”

*

The room is dark but for the moonlight reflected off the waves. It makes it a liminal place. Ford runs his fingers up, through Stan’s hair, and begins to stroke, slowly. Following the lines of his eyebrows, his nose, following the deep wrinkles in his brow. Stan can hear Ford’s breath, a little shallow, now. Ford must be right about touch, because Stan’s heartbeat is slowing, the dream slipping away.

*

“I’ll kill it,” Ford says, “I’ll kill the damned thing and – ”

Stan vomits again, the liquid coming up thin and painful. When he can speak, he claps his hand on Ford’s arm. “Great,” he says, “but calm down, man.”

*

“Is this normal?” Ford asks, as he circles his thumbs at the hook of Stan’s jaw. “We didn’t do this as children, did we?”

“Nah,” Stan says.

Ford doesn’t stop. Not yet.

*

It’s only once Stan has caught his breath that he sees it:

Ford’s eyes, white-rimmed with panic, his face so pale that Stan’s amazed any blood is getting to his brain. He’s shaking harder than Stan, doesn’t seem to have a clue what to do with himself.

It’s in this moment that Stan finally accepts what he has been learning for the last year.

Ford grips his shoulders, hard. “I thought…”

Stan nods. “No kidding,” he says. His hands, he realizes, are on Ford’s sides, twisting in his soaked jacket. Ford tightens his grip on his shoulders.

“Damn,” Ford says, “damn.” He pulls Stan into a tight embrace.

“You think you can get rid of me that easily?” Stan says. His voice is rough – from the seawater, he’s sure.

“No,” Ford says. The word vibrates against Stan’s neck. “I don’t.”

Somewhere deep in the cabin, an alarm beeps, warning them that some component or other has broken. The sea, quiet now, hushes against the hull of the boat. They drip on the deck, shivering and breathing together.

“I love you, Stanley,” Ford says.

It would be easy to reply with some joke. To push him overboard, or deflect. It’s Stan’s first urge, because hearing Ford be so vulnerable and raw scares him. It’s not what they do. It’s not how they operate. Stan swallows. He turns his face into Ford’s neck and holds him a little tighter. He can’t say it. But, hell, Ford’s the smartest person he’s ever known.

He knows what Stan’s silence means.

*

“Hey, Sixer,” Stan says, as he tosses him a beer from the cooler. “Why’d the tennis player not care that he didn’t have any points?”

Ford frowns. “He had low standards for himself and no self-worth.” Stan groans; Ford smiles, and tries again. “Let’s see, tennis…tennis…” Stan drops into the chair next to Ford, bumping his elbow roughly just to rattle him a little. “You know, I don’t think I knew anything about tennis even before going through the portal. Alright. Why did the tennis player not care that he didn’t have any points?”

“Because,” Stan says, “he was in  _love._ ”

It takes him a second; when the joke clicks, he throws his head back and laughs, grabbing Stan’s arm as he does.

He doesn’t let go. He just moves his hand further down, until his hand is in Stan’s.

“It’s terrible,” Ford says. “Have you told Mabel that one? She would love it. Anyway – my biggest concern is about the navigation system…”

“Stanford,” Stan says. It’s funny – here they are, two old men holding hands, and he’s pretty sure Ford hasn’t made that last connection. Leave it to his brilliant brother.

“Hm? What? Have the rules of tennis changed? I thought love was – ”

Stan lifts their joined hands and squeezes.

Here’s the thing that’s really wild: Stan, at this point, would normally be just about ready to jump off the deck to avoid pursuing this conversation. He’d normally let it go, because pushing it more might mean being pushed away. But, though his heart is picking up, though he can feel heat creeping up his face, he’s still – he’s fine. It’s Stanford. And he knows, for the first time in a long, long time, that Ford will not leave him, not even for this. Not even if Stan has misinterpreted everything.

So he waits, and watches Ford with growing amusement. And when the big picture slots into place and Ford’s eyes grow wide and his face goes red, Stan laughs.

“Oh,” Ford says. “ _Oh.”_

Maybe Stan jumped the gun when he thought that his nerves weren’t so bad: Ford’s expression turns thoughtful and serious, and immediately Stan’s heart picks up its pace and his palms begin to sweat. He swallows.

“Oh,” Ford says, looking now at their joined hands.

Stan swallows. “Got any consonants, maybe?”

“X,” Ford says, still turning things over in his mind. “B. Sometimes Y.”

 _Bye,_ Stan thinks.  _Ex._

“So,” Ford says. He shakes their hands a little, and finally, finally meets Stan’s eyes, but only for a second, glancing away right after. “This seems important.” He clears his throat. “Like we should mark the occasion, somehow.”

Stan rubs his forehead with his free hand. “We really gotta work on your people skills,” he says. “Jeez.”

“What did I say?”

“Forget it. Just – commemorate it, huh? Commemorate what?” He’s teasing Ford, now, should maybe feel a little bad, since Ford is clearly even more out of his depth than Stan is – he wonders if Ford has ever been with another person like that, if he’s even been kissed. Probably. He’s a nerd, but he’s magnetic, even if he doesn’t realize it; people are drawn to him, and stay there if they’re not repelled by his tactlessness.

Ford tries to pull his hand away, frowning – but Stan doesn’t let him, just tightens his grip and turns in his chair. “Alright,” Stan says, “alright. Commemorate…let’s see. We got some booze. We had a pretty good dinner, earlier. No streamers or party balloons, but hey, this is short notice. Alright – I got it.” He sets his beer down on the deck and turns a little more, bumping knees with Ford, who has gone very quiet. Waiting. “Hold still,” Stan says. “This might get ugly.”

Ford lets out a surprised laugh, and Stan leans in, grinning, too.

“I said hold still,” he says. “C'mon, Stanford, this – look, this is some serious, scientific stuff. If you’re not careful, it can go all wrong.”

“What are you  _doing?_ ” He’s still laughing, and when Stan lets go, his hands move to Stan’s lapels, twisting there.

“I warned you,” Stan says. He leans in, one hand sliding up Ford’s chin to cup his jaw, the tips of his fingers burying in his soft gray sideburns. “C'mere, you nerd.”

Ford hasn’t quite caught his breath when Stan’s lips finally touch his – he lets out a sharp exhale against Stan’s face and goes still, his lips parting under Stan’s. The angle is kinda awkward. Ford’s lips are chapped, his breath sharp from beer.

It’s not the best kiss Stan has ever had. But it’s  _theirs,_ and can’t be taken back, can’t be interpreted any other way. And, after a moment, Ford presses back, and rests his hands against Stan’s chest. The kiss deepens, soft and slow. Ford’s teeth scrape at Stan’s bottom lip.

Ford breaks the kiss with a gentle, wet noise. They blink at each other, a little sheepishly. “I suppose that will do,” Ford says.

Stan grins. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess it will.”


End file.
